Lions must draft competition for Jared Goff ASAP
The Joey Harrington effect
Despite the overwhelming evidence that first-overall selection, Matthew Stafford, was head-and-shoulders better than any other Detroit Lions quarterback and a poster boy for why quarterbacks get drafted highly, there are still people with no stomach for drafting a quarterback in Round-1.
They will rattle off a list of names, Chuck Long, Andre Ware, Joey Harrington, and maybe even Stafford, who never won despite their high draft status. Of course, quarterbacks don’t play defense, don’t block for themselves, or catch their own passes. Asking a quarterback to overcome a huge deficit of talent on the roster is a recipe for bad win-loss records and the typical modus operandi, or way of operating, for the franchise.
If fans stopped for a minute to think about what makes quarterbacks “go bad“, throwing them into the lineup too soon should occur to them as a frequent mistake. Many other draft busts have been men who got hurt and could not continue their careers, like Ryan Leaf or Tim Couch.
Perhaps people would recall that these men were also asked to start immediately, which could’ve lead to their injuries, could it not?
It’s rare, not impossible, that a prospect simply cannot play in the NFL or doesn’t want to improve after being drafted high; JaMarcus Russell comes to mind. Russell got a big payday and never seemed to work towards earning the money he was given and ate his way out of the NFL.
As prophecy hath foretold, people knew he would regret his actions, he eventually got back into shape and wanted another chance but no one was willing to take that risk, despite his considerable physical tools. That’s part of the reason that rookies get a smaller amount of guaranteed money, too, because the risk is higher and guaranteeing huge sums of money to 21-23 year old compounds the risk.
Teams spend huge amounts of money investigating prospects and have developed systems to help scout talent to avoid the bad risks. Not every skill-set translates to the NFL from college, either, just ask Andre Ware or Tim Tebow. Both won the Heisman but couldn’t live up to the college hype.
Anecdotal evidence of mistakes illustrates the idea that correlation and causation are not the same. Taking a quarterback early in Round 1 does not equate to throwing out the pick, as some fans will continue to believe. Let’s consider the current NFL.